The Ashes Stairs
by Stingmon
Summary: Tomorrow the war will come to an end. There will be conquerors and defeated, all pretense of harmony will be broken and fire reduced to ashes. Still one firebender remains, who will never be ashamed.
1. Soon hatred will fall apart

**The Ashes Stairs**

(The triple apology of fire)

So...a three shots. I am not sure it is too normal that I have been translating this, since it was the only story no one voted for on my profile... Even that Lovecraft crossover got one vote, you guys are just great! So I hope it doesn't feel like I'm making fun of you or something. The next chapter of "To Honour the moment" just takes so long translating, partly because I'm unhappy with the French dialogs and trying to change them...Ugh. I thought it would be nice if I could at least post something else.

And to be honest, I'm going tomorrow for a ten days long, hopefully life-changing field trip in the Alps with my fellow geology students, and I want to post this beforehand so I can cultivate the vague hope of getting a lot a reviews by the time I come back! Next chapter should be up in about two weeks, in any case.

Those three stories were all written some time ago (the last one, especially, was written shortly after the ending of the Avatar series), and are all some indirect apology of firebending. Mostly details I found interesting or puzzling about this element. Boy, do I suck with introductions.

Have a good reading!

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><p><span>Soon hatred will fall apart<span>

It is the cold that will kill him at last, Zhao decides. The cold, not the lack of oxygen, squeezed from his lungs by the inhuman grasp of the spirit and, soon enough, by the dark water shimmering under his legs. The cold, not the suffocating fear of facing the bluish creature, illuminated like in an absurd nightmare by the moon he was not able to defeat.

The cold.

The failure. The lone death in a hostile land.

There seems to be some logic in the very unreality of the situation. Inescapable. Perhaps it is this sense of fatality that paralyses him, sucks in all the protests he might have uttered, reduces him to silence more efficiently than the monster's cold hand crushing his chest. Yes, all too logical. Killed by the spirit he could not destroy.

Yet his eyes, instead of staying still and dignified to face his fate, search the foreign town. They look for more familiar a colour than the white of the snow, or the ghostly blue dragging him to his death, or the translucent frost crystallizing all the way to his bones.

He searches, and his gaze fall on a young man, covered in burns and scratches, barely standing on a great ice bridge, whose bright golden eyes stare back at him in consternation.

Zuko the banished prince. The foil, the enemy, the rival and the target.

His perpetual failure.

Perhaps that, too, is fate's design. This being who named himself _"blue spirit"_, this being Zhao has tried to kill three times already, always in vain, Zuko, standing here to witness his fall.

Zuko is not wearing the smirking mask, though. On his scarred face, in his asymmetrical eyes, there is nothing to be seen but horror and shock: fate startles him. It always does. The boy just does not match up, the general used to think, he never was able to live up to his birth. With his injuries, and the white mercenary's clothes, he looks stateless. Pathetic. The child could collapse at any moment: Zhao knows he is exhausted. He could see him shiver as they fought, and with each blow the shock seemed to shake his whole skull.

Zuko beat him, though. Again. In the eerie light, where everything merges into the same translucent blue, only the boy's eyes remain of the same intense gold as he watches him, and does not understand.

"_His__ eyes are of the purest, most intact gold. It is the Sun itself that runs in his veins. He will be a great master."_

Zhao cannot remember the name of the inept courtier who said those three sentences to Lady Ursa, fawning over the wailing infant who, years later, would challenge him to an Agni Kai and beat him. That cursed weakling who in ten years of training had barely managed to learn the basics of firebending… A surge of hatred gives him an illusion of warmth. However the spirit's grip tightening on him prevents any expression from showing on his face.

He cannot remember a time where he would not have hated Prince Zuko, son of Ozai. He will never admit that this loathing started way before their duel, that it might have started before the prince was even born. However the contours of time are fading in front of imminent death. He is not sure he knows what _never_ means anymore.

Zuko starts running towards him. The gold of his eyes shines in the dark, and Zhao still cannot read the expression inside. Steam comes out of the boy's mouth, as if in spite of all his tiredness there is still fire in his lungs. And so Zhao remembers, confesses. He takes the thread of his life and goes back in time, for the first and the last time.

It is a long way backwards, more than twenty years in the past. At that time there was no Prince Zuko nor general Zhao, only Zhao the novice, the prodigy, and no Zuko at all. There was a teacher as well: a grave man whose eyes still seem to look at him with disdain, whose name is Jeong Jeong.

There begins the hatred, fed with insufferable helplessness.

"_You have no control, Zhao; all you do is destroy. You will never be a true bender."_

For months he had tried this absurd exercise, again and again. Always in vain. He who usually never needed more than a week to master a move. Sour rage. Yellow bile. He never should have wasted his time like this, _never_, striving like a fool to maintain a small flame on the ground without burning the grass. Perpetual failure.

_You will never be a true bender._

From this time, this one sentence came the hatred, the secret loathing of his rival whose fire licked the grass, trees, tapestries, shelves brimming with books, and none of those detestable things ever, _ever_ burned.

The first time Zhao had witnessed the wonder, the prince was having a tantrum in the royal gardens. Jeong Jeong was no longer a teacher but a deserter, and his exercise, the perpetual failure, had been relegated long ago to the rank of inane anecdote it deserved. Zuko must have been eleven or twelve.

Zhao would have broken his spine.

He would have destroyed his face, like Lord Ozai did a few years later, _the same hatred? It could not be…_

He would have burned his too-bright golden eyes, those eyes that never paid attention to the intact tapestries and grass, as though the impossible solution of this nightmarish exercise had never given him any trouble, as though he always knew what Zhao would never find out.

_You will never be a true bender._

Hatred of having to wonder whether Jeong Jeong the teacher would have admired Zuko the rival.

And above everything else, hatred of knowing that Zuko will never hate him like he loathes _(envies) _him with every fibre of his being. He will not hate him, no matter how many times Zhao will stab him in the back or have him hunted down like an animal.

The cold is already gnawing at his mind; his thoughts are getting blurred. Soon there will be nothing but the dark depths of the ocean and the monster's piercing blue.

He has always hated Zuko, and never understood him. That may be why he never wondered by what miracle or spell the child survived his ship's explosion. That may be why he is only half surprised by the pale hand, covered in chilblains, that he is holding out to him tonight.

Zuko's voice is weak as he desperately offers his help. In his eyes circled with burns, whose limpid brightness always contrasted with the madness of the general, there is nothing to read but incomprehension and fear.

He is very young, this boy he has been trying to destroy.

Zhao hates him. However even this fact seems very far away now, loses its consistence as the water nears and the cold sucks in his breath.

And thus, rather than staying still and dignified to face his fate like his rank would have required, stupidly, all in all, he carves in his slowly freezing mind the picture of two eyes of molten gold, devoid of hatred, and takes it with him to the bottom of the ocean.


	2. Soon all parasites will turn to ashes

**The Ashes Stairs**

(The triple apology of fire)

So. I'm alive, I've been hiking for ten days and seeing beautiful landscapes, my feet hate me. I didn't get any review, but I DID hope while I was there, so I guess I've reached my goal!

Damn, I forgot to thank my beta-reader in the first chapter! Thank you so much, Avocadolove!

Sorry for posting the second chapter a bit later than planned. Hope you have a good reading? Second POV is Zuko.

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><p><span>Soon all parasites will turn to ashes<span>

He hasn't seen a single cloud all day. The air is trembling under a veil of dust, distorting the dry, inexorable landscape of dead grass and yellowish stones.

The pole's endless ice looked almost pretty in comparison.

His own sweat burns his skin. The sun has beaten down on him since the breaking dawn; Zuko sighs in relief as the oasis' shadow and the evening air caress his face. It should feel ironic, the relief. But this white-hot sun, barely reaching the horizon after one interminable day, would not bother him in the least if it were _normal._

A light fragrant with the ocean's fresh and salty air, warming a dark earth, softer and richer than any oasis of this giant desert of stones. A golden light pouring down into bright green forests, a perfumed heat that does not vanish like a mirage as soon as the night falls… The sun.

This distant, metallic glare, saturated with dust, he wishes he could give it another name.

Nothing ironic here: what he really hates is the dust. The dry, stinking dust irritating his eyes and throat, seeping into the rags that serve him as clothes, rekindling his thirst. This dust that manages to make him dread Agni's light, the very core of his bending.

Zuko shakes his head. He wants to burn all the dust in the world, but sweat has bitten his face for too long now: his features are too rigid for him to even express anger. Cannot speak.

His body stiff with a whole day of riding, the banished prince laboriously passes one leg over the saddle and loosens the girths. The ostrich horse's chest is heaving; it struggles against the reins and clicks its beak reproachfully. It can smell the lake next to them. Its head sinks into the water before Zuko is even done tying it to the nearest tree.

The teenager lets himself sink to the ground, exhaustion making him briefly forget his own thirst. He presses his face to his open palms, slowly massages his temples, and grimaces as he notices he stinks nearly as much as the animal next to him.

He has been riding since dawn.

Six days have passed since he and his uncle parted. (Sometimes he forgets why they did.)

Three weeks have passed since the Fire Nation branded him a traitor (_Why_, he still does not even know _why…)_

Ever since, he has done nothing but run away. He chose this direction at random; he doesn't know where to head in those stupidly huge lands. There is nothing there, nothing to find, he has not seen a village since dawn. Zuko absent-mindedly runs his fingers through the damp grass, then lets droplets of water slide down his temples and neck to cool them down. He really is thirsty… All day long he has seen nothing but ugly piles of angular rocks, arid places only degenerate Earth peasants could consider habitable. For the umpteenth time he finds himself wondering what moronic reasoning might have urged his ancestors to sacrifice thousands of their men to colonize one giant heap of dust.

_If only _he _could give all the lands in the world and finally go home…_

Zuko violently shakes his head to stop this trail of thoughts, to not have to remember that no ship nor mission will give him back his homeland now (_why?_). He really is thirsty. The lake in front of him isn't exactly the purest oasis: the whole place is infested with buzzing insects, but he hasn't drunk since almost ten hours.

Just when he plunges his hands in the dark mirror of the lake, slightly wrinkling every time an insect brushes the surface, he notices the strange form of the creatures surrounding him. The insects are nearly shapeless: tiny white, slimy worms, squirming grotesquely at the end of two buzzing wings. Earth Kingdom parasites. Schist mosquitoes, he thinks their name is. The water must be filled with their eggs.

The banished prince drinks in long draughts, trying to not think about the invisible things swarming in there.

Schist mosquitoes don't live very long unless they can grow in the human body: their larvae enter the veins, creeping through the skin's pore, and swell as they strip the host of his strength. That's why those creatures mostly come out in the evening, when they are most likely to find a prey made thirsty by a day of work. Or by a day of travel.

That's what he has been told, in any case. He doesn't remember whether the warning came from his uncle or from a peasant, in the village he went through at dawn, who would have for some reason felt invited to go and talk to him. It probably was a peasant.

For a second, the shadow of a derisive smile appears on his lips.

After drinking, Zuko splashes some water on his face. With a grimace he finally takes off his tattered, foul-smelling clothes, whose greenish colour seems to try and insult him. He has grown a lot thinner these past days. His skin is grey with dust. Maybe after some time he will look just like the dark, emaciated figures of the Earth Kingdom.

_I won't. _

The sensation of cold water against his limbs gives him the illusion of strength. The half-smile remains on his face as he carefully washes the scar around his eye then scrubs his arms in quick, forceful gestures.

He smiles, exhausted, as though by getting rid of his foreign clothes and of the dust that sticks to his skin like a mask, he can also wash away the false identity he has had to take on.

He isn't from the Earth Kingdom. His hometown wasn't destroyed by firebenders; he did _not_ get his scar during a raid; nothing, _nothing _about this desert of jagged stones is home, he's not like them and _his name is not Li!_

At last the teenager can breathe more freely. A wisp of smoke rises from his mouth and nostrils. Fire starts flowing through his arteries: his body temperature is bordering on forty-five degrees already, and keeps increasing.

His face has hardened.

Let those schist creatures come. Let their larvae come through his skin, like thousands have colonized his flesh the moment his lips touched the water. Let them settle in his veins and try to grow into fat slimy worms to block the circulation of his blood and choke him from the inside. _Let them try_, since he isn't an Earth refugee but a firebender, and since his blood is already turning them to ashes!

_Sixty degrees. Seventy-five._

It is the body temperature, the thinkers of his homelands and the officials in charge of the propaganda say, that makes firebenders superior to all other races, a people destined for conquest and war. Our blood is perfect, purified by Agni's very flames: even the foreign illnesses of the most remote lands have no holds on us.

No parasite in the world can survive touching the superior element.

His fire makes him greater than any peasant he meets, the distant voices of an old propaganda whisper to him; it makes him greater no matter how much he can lose, his title, his ship, his land, his face and his very name. His blood alone makes him superior, they say, and today more than ever Zuko longs to believe them. He would give anything to ignore the fact that, because of this same blood, cold and hunger have so much more effect on him than on any Earth man, that in order to maintain this formidable body heat the fire eats all the meagre food he can find, pumps up his strength, and has already started eating into his muscles for lack of anything else. He would give anything to forget that the slightest wisp of air, away from the equator, feels ice cold against his too hot skin, that neither the clothes those peasants weave nor the houses they build quite protect him from the cold.

His teeth and fists clench. Clouds of steam rise around him. The schist larvae are all dead now; his perfect blood is filled with corpses. Tears of frustration run from his unburned eye, but Zuko doesn't notice them. He keeps scrubbing off the dust with fierce determination, scratching his arms in the process.

_Ninety degrees._

He needs this faith: he wants to believe that his fire will protect him from illnesses like it saved him from freezing to death in the North Pole. He wants to believe fire will allow him to fight all the parasites that will ever try to feed on his strength, no matter their size, no matter their power and hatred, be it a worm in stagnant waters or a princess at the head of the Fire Nation armies.

He wants to believe his fire really can cleanse his body and mind from all the weaknesses, doubts, lies and multiple treasons that have been eating into him for years. He wants to believe this fire, somehow, will one day free him from exile.

His inner fire is the only thing a hundred years of war hasn't been able to take away from him. He holds onto it.

_One hundred degrees._

He would take it further, let his anger and the stubborn ambers of his hope set the air ablaze, surround himself with steam until he cannot see the outside world, let the whole lake boil until it _evaporates _and no schist larva can ever live in here again. However, the basic firebending has worsened his hunger. His stomach feels so empty he cannot breathe, and there is nothing left in his bag but some dry bread, hard as the rocks he endlessly passes by.

The steam comes down. Once again, he is alone in the ring of scrawny trees, whose shadows have grown nearly hostile in the declining light. Beyond them, the road Zuko has been following is swallowed by the night. The banished prince can hardly see the silhouette of the ostrich horse sleeping at the edge of the lake, feathers puffed up against the evening air. Between the branches a few stars have appeared, distant and cold.

He gets out of the water, shivering, too white in the shadows, starving and exhausted. The sun has set in the horizon: he will probably be too tired to make a fire before falling asleep. So he will have to wait in the icy wind of this foreign land, alone, until the day breaks again and covers him with dust. He misses his uncle.

Zuko starts drowsing before he's even done putting his clothes back on. He doesn't notice the surface of the lake is now as smooth as a mirror behind him: the schist mosquitoes have all fled the oasis, driven away by the formidable heat of a young bender.

And perhaps by the vague knowledge that sooner or later, all parasites end up in ashes.

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><p>Next and last chapter: <span>And soon Fire itself<span> (POV: Jeong Jeong)


	3. And soon, Fire itself

The Ashes Stairs

(the triple apology of fire)

I'm sorry for being slightly late for the last chapter. Due to RL being a pain in the neck, Avocadolove won't be my beta-reader from now on. I thank her eternally for all the great advice she has given me all this time (years? I think it has been years. Oh my god). That also means that, from now on and until I find a new beta-reader (if I do find one), I will have to rely on my own translation skills, and on those of my sister Nadramon. I hope it won't come out too bad: please don't hesitate to point out mistakes if you find some.

That also reminds me that for years, my sister Nadramon has been beta-reading all of my works, the French versions as well as the translations, and hearing me blabber and complain about my ideas or lack thereof, without me even acknowledging it on my authors' notes. Soooooorry, Sis, and thanks for everything! Thanks as well to Spry for your kind review!

I hope you have a good reading!

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><p><span>And soon, Fire itself<span>

Jeong Jeong has always lived near the Spirit World: he knows it. Gods, ghosts, creatures of the dark constantly talk to him, and among them, he can always recognize the sinister crackling of his malediction. Reddish and lukewarm, the treacherous thing, she hides in the core of his small camp fires. She waits for the old man's attention to wander, waits for the day she can break free and devour all living beings.

Spirits talk to him all the time: calls, pleas, sometimes threats, but above all else, they teach him. He owes them his knowledge of the malediction. The other firebenders have let their element eat into them like rust into a sword: they are long blind. They have no spirit to whisper into their ear how wrong their very nature is, how hideous they are, all of them, day after day…

Tonight (a dark night, with no moon to be seen aside from the bloody form of a comet, slowly growing larger), the spirits are restless: they rustle, murmur, rumble; they shiver all the way to his veins and along his nerves. They know. They are warning him: tonight it shall be done.

And Jeong Jeong nods, and answers quietly: I know. My time has come. _Our _time has come.

Soon Fire will be destroyed.

He is hiding with his peers from the Order of the White Lotus near the gates of Ba Sing Se. The city exudes hatred, annexed as it is by the Fire Nation. Licked by the flames of the damned _(his own flames, he too is cursed, he too…) _but soon Fire itself will turn to ashes.

And perhaps he, Jeong Jeong, will be free at last. Perhaps…

The spirits' voices fill his ears. He is but vaguely aware of the outside world. It is enough to accomplish his tasks, though. He knows the Avatar's allies have arrived to their camp. He knows his legs are moving, bringing him towards the group and their giant white mount.

He thinks the girl blessed by the spirits of water will probably be with them, she who can heal the horrible wounds Jeong Jeong is condemned to inflict. How he envies this child...

Yet perhaps, very soon, once Fire will be destroyed, perhaps there won't be a malediction any longer, and he won't need to envy anyone, not even the blessed child, for there will be no fire to put out and her power will rot, and little by little the streams will run dry and one day there will be nothing nothing at all, at last, nothing but dust and death and silence and the spirits will finally fall silent.

Perhaps.

Jeong Jeong listens to the spirits, more so than to the people who surround him: their voices guide him, in his world and in their own, when he gets lost in their realm during his dreams. The spirits know what mortals don't, and through their whispers the old man _senses_, long before he can see the four faces in the dark, the presence and the scent of the cursed one hidden among them.

Scent of burned flesh, of incense and storm.

Calmly, his body is heading towards the travelers. His White Lotus peers surround him, dressed in armours of shining grey like the moon's glare. Not one muscle on his face twitches. His heartbeats have never been so even. His white-hot hands are already clenching around a neck he cannot reach.

He can see his face.

The spirits roar.

_He knows him._

He will not be able to say, later that night, from where comes the memory of this being he has never met. A wanted poster, he will be told, the face of a criminal placed not too far from his, on a wall, above the twisted smile of a blue monster. He will not believe it.

But it may be that no one will even think of saying the words "wanted poster" to him, anyway, for they will all kneel before the smoking corpse and scream, and his own comrades will have to overcome violent spasms of horror to tie him up and shut him away _(but I am cursed, didn't you know?)_, and even the face of the Water Tribe girl will be bathed in shining tears, twisted by despair and rage, and above all else it will be that look, the distress of the blessed child, that Jeong Jeong will never be able to understand.

No, he will not believe it: his memory is much older than his desertion. He knows him. His guise is that of a young man with eyes of gold, the colour of the cursed star that eats at them all, and he would be perfectly hidden behind his mask of kindness and courage if the left side of his face had not been torn out to reveal the monster.

He sees fire. A young man nearly bald in spite of the rich black hair framing his face, dressed like a soldier in spite of his dark tunic, furious despite his smile. His skin is distorted and rough like scales. And he stands straight and proud, the cursed one, surrounded by flames and the scent of flames, and though he remains silent his roar is louder than all the spirits' voices:

_I am Fire!_

_I am the sun, I am the soul of dragons!_

_I am not cursed and I will never be ashamed!_

YOU ARE CURSED!

Proud, the young master of the cursed element. Proud in spite of the hideous burn that denies him all resemblance to the human race, proud even as his eyes widen and he throws himself backwards to try and escape the javelin of fire shredding his red tunic. Jeong Jeong's heartbeats remain even. The monster is too slow: he only has the time to wave his arms in a reflex of panic, pushing the blessed child out of the way before the fire can reach her as well.

He can hear screams. Spirits, probably, unless it is the horrified voices of his comrades as they watch him step closer, he Jeong Jeong, he the cursed man, fire still gushing out of his arms and fists to the ground where the monster twists and screams, his whole body arched, ablaze and still _proud_ and the suffocating hatred drowns out what the spirits and mortals are trying to tell him.

The monster's roar is ringing in his ears; perhaps it will never cease. The smell of incense, storm and burned flesh has engulfed everything. He cannot hear nor feel a thing, even as Iroh runs up behind him and with one strike shatters half of his skull. He collapses, but fire still surges out of his broken arms and feeds the human torch _(Iroh is screaming out in even more pain than the boy, Jeong Jeong does not understand why)._

YOU ARE CURSED!

The sentence drills into his mind. He wonders what sort of spirit is shouting it, mad with laughter, scratching his throat and aping his voice.

Fire has risen around the monster, the boy whose face was destroyed by his element, by his own curse, but still he looks _proud_, even at the very moment of his death when he seems to stand against the black sky, flames and ashes and golden sparks like his stare, _proud_, a great figure glowing red in the dark, like a dragon with fiery eyes looking down on him, the curse, Fire itself, and the old man remains helpless on the ground without turning his eyes, his body broken, paralyzed with cold, misery, and with insufferable longing:

_I am Fire! _Says the dragon, the banished boy dressed in the armour of the cursed nation, the murdered man who in sixteen years has learnt more about his element than Jeong Jeong will ever grasp. _I am the sun, I am the soul of dragons! I am not cursed and I will never be ashamed! _


End file.
